NEW DELHI: After taking a divergent view from other Left parties over the presidential election, CPM has tried to justify its support to UPA nominee Pranab Mukherjee, saying abstention would have meant siding with archrival Trinamool Congress and blunting party's intervention in the emerging political scenario.

CPM general secretary Prakash Karat has used the forthcoming issue of party's mouthpiece, 'People's Democracy', to justify the stand on the presidential election.

Reiterating that the Left Front stands united nationally despite taking different views, Karat has written, "Abstention in this case would mean lining up with Mamata Banerjee and the TMC in West Bengal. This would be politically damaging and unacceptable... One of the important tasks for the party is to defend the strongest base of the Left (West Bengal), which, in turn, will help the party and the Left to advance nationally. Further, it is not a question of West Bengal alone. At the national level, abstention would amount to the party withdrawing from the fray. It would blunt the intervention of the party in the developing political scenario."

The article comes after the expulsion of youth leader Prasenjit Bose, who had protested against CPM's support to Mukherjee, terming it as a "grave error". Bose had raised a number of issues in his resignation letter and had asked why CPM could not abstain like CPI and RSP.

Karat has written in the article that the party could not follow the policy of equidistance from Congress and BJP on all matters. "The political line of fighting Congress and BJP should not be equated as maintaining equidistance from both on all matters...," the CPM general secretary said.